— CALD and Lived Experience Leadership
Summary
The Australian culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) population is highly diverse. The journeys of migrants, refugees and people seeking asylum are vastly different. Their unique and shared experiences impact on the care they receive as health consumers.
Multicultural lived experience encompasses the experiences, knowledge and understanding of people from CALD backgrounds. It incorporates lived and living experience that is ongoing. It draws on their personal experiences of migration, settlement, acculturation and experiences of becoming unwell, seeking health services and recovery. The lived experience of people from CALD backgrounds provides powerful insight into the strengths and weaknesses of the healthcare system and how the inequity that lies within it, can be best tackled. It is the missing voice.
Summary
The How’s Your Haal? Project is the WA chapter of a national youth leadership program administered by the Australian Multicultural Foundation (‘AMF’). In 2020 the Project hosted three community conversations and various online engagements with over 90 young people from Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CaLD) backgrounds on the subject of mental health.
There were some common themes in the suggestions on improve the mental health outcomes for youth from CaLD backgrounds going forward:
- Increase capacity of CaLD youth to facilitate community conversations: Community dialogues were seen as one of the most effective ways to reduce stigma on the issue of mental health - both within and across communities.
- Develop peer-to-peer support systems to bridge the gap between youth and service providers: Peer to-peer support systems were seen as crucial to getting buy-in for any initiative seeking to engage CaLD youth to improve mental health e.g. teaching each other mental health first-aid; hacking how best to talk to service providers about issues regarding culture etc; developing systems of help-seeking.
- Support “by us, for us” storytelling to reduce stigma: Increased visibility of CaLD leaders who are willing addressing mental health head-on - whether sharing their own stories publicly or talking to smaller groups of young people - was seen as an important of destigmatising unhelpful narratives around mental health, particularly with parents.
- Increase opportunities for co-design with CaLD youth into formal programming: This is particularly for any training that seeks to improve service provision with CaLD communities
Background
Ensuring the voices of young advocates have a platform for being heard and for participating in the improvement of public policy for future generations of culturally diverse community groups.
The Intercultural Young Advocacy Leaders (IYAL) program is a pathway for young people from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds to develop advocacy, governance and leadership experience. The two-year program also provides ECCV with advice and input on matters affecting CALD youth in Victoria, adding another important voice for multicultural Victoria.
IYAL is a sub-committee of the ECCV Board which helps connect ECCV with CALD young people across Victoria, while developing future leadership pathways within and between ECCV members.
ECCV ran a successful pilot of the IYAL program in 2018-19, bringing together a diverse group of 12 next-generation leaders aged 21 to 30. During the four-month pilot, the group received awareness-raising sessions to enhance their knowledge and skills of governance and leadership in our culturally diverse community. After a hiatus in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the program is back in 2021.
Through a rigorous recruitment phase in early 2021, ECCV selected 12 young people with an interest in developing their experience in leadership and helping their communities. The IYAL group will help co-design the program to best reflect their needs and interests when it comes to leadership and advocacy. They will participate in workshops, training sessions and networking events throughout the two-year program. The participants will also interact and provide feedback to the ECCV board.
Background
Embrace Multicultural Mental Health (the Embrace Project) is run by Mental Health Australia with funding provided by the Australian Government Department of Health. Mental Health Australia is partnering with the Federation of Ethnic Communities’ Council of Australia (FECCA), and the National Ethnic Disability Alliance (NEDA) to deliver the project.
The project provides a national focus on mental health and suicide prevention for people from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds. It provides a national platform for Australian mental health services and multicultural communities to access resources, services and information in a culturally accessible format.
The key objectives of the project are to:
- Increase participation of consumers and carers from CALD backgrounds in mental health services,
- Improve outcomes for CALD mental health consumers, carers and their families,
- Increase mental health awareness, knowledge and capacity in CALD communities, and
- Improve cultural responsiveness and diversity of the mental health workforce.
Summary
in 2013, Pritika and her peers founded the youth-led mental health movement, ShoutOut!, a project of Multicultural Youth NT. ShoutOut! is run by young people, for young people between the ages of 15 and 28.The project empowers young people to change community perceptions of mental illness and advocate for more relevant services.
ShoutOut! values the power of story and individual experience to inform community and system change. Pritika is the 2015 Young Achiever of the Year, 2016 Darwin Young Citizen of the Year and 2016 Australia India Business and Community Awards Young Community Achiever of the Year.